QT: Innovations In Fact-Checking

By Zay N. Smith

News Headline: "Facts take a beating at second presidential debate."News Headline: "No debate over whether they twist facts."News Headline: "Presidential debates need format change."
Too late for changes tonight.
But QT recalls a one-man play in theaters a few years ago.
The play was set up so members of the audience could push buttons to deliver slight electrical shocks to the performer.
This format could be adapted.
Or were you thinking of dunk tanks?
Might work.
The political process can always use a little tweaking.

News Headline: "2012 race: Will the popular vote winner lose the electoral college tally?"
Nothing to worry about here.
This hasn't happened in almost 12 years.

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News Headline: "German lawmakers move to quell uproar over circumcision."
More evidence that there is nothing in the world that the human race can't get into an uproar about.

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News Headline: "Why was 'Snakes on a Plane' a box-office disappointment?"
Katherine Rylaarsdam, a Baltimore reader, writes:
"I was looking up the proper name of my favorite little brown snakes (Storeria dekayi), which I occasionally encounter while mowing or weeding. Then I thought I ought to mention this to you: I have plenty of snakes on the terrain."
Wait. This just in.
Reminding us of a Grammar R Us item that "sheik" rhymes with "cake," Katherine Rylaarsdam writes again:
"Is the State Department keeping track of the sheiks in Bahrain?"
Or. . . .

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News Headline: "Four dead in Wisconsin shooting, including gunman."News Headline: "Authorities investigate spate of roadway shootings in Michigan."News Headline: "Mass shootings and the NRA."
Why do we keep bringing the National Rifle Association into these matters?
The NRA doesn't kill people.
People kill people.
All the NRA can hope to do is facilitate.

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QT Early Warning System:
John Kerry was 10 points ahead of President Bush in the swing states at this point in 2004.

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Modern Education + the Criminal Mind =
When police found illegal drugs in the pants pocket of a man in Grove City, Calif., the man thought quickly and said, "Oh, wait, these aren't my pants."

News Headline: "Democrats broke pledge by taking corporate convention cash."News Headline: "Democrats in bed with corporations."
No, no, no.
To review:
It is the Republicans who are in bed with the corporations.
The Democrats like to curl up at the foot of the bed.

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QT What Passes for Miracles These Days Update:
Dave Carr, an Owen Sound, Ontario, reader, wants to know that an image of Jesus has been found in the mold behind a refrigerator in Herne Bay, England.

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Two days remain until National Mole Day, after the unit of chemistry, the mole, which is the amount of substance of a system that contains as many elementary entities as there are atoms in 0.012 kilograms of carbon-12, these entities being molecules, atoms, ions, electrons or other subatomic particles, or groups of particles, the number being 6.02214 X 10 to the 23rd power, or 602.214 billion trillion.
Party!

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Today's Birthdays: Xerography, 74; Xerography, 74.

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QT Grammar R Us Seminar on the English Language:
Doug Dahlgren, a Chicago reader, regarding supermarkets that don't know it should be "10 Items or Fewer," not "10 Items or Less," as "less" refers to quantities that can't be counted, writes:
"There's a Thriftway store in Olympia, Wash., whose sign above the express lane actually says "fewer" instead of "less." Only one I've ever seen. There's also a Safeway store in Portland, Ore., with a sign in the meat case that reads 'artificial Krab.' I asked the lady behind the counter if that meant it was real crab, but she didn't get it."
QT has never settled for less than genuine artificial crab.
A group of crabs is a consortium of crabs, by the way.